The unique (and not-so-unique) challenges and observations of an IT pro.

Friday, December 16, 2011

IE 9 isn't all that bad. Please don't delete me from your RSS reader.

I'm going to say a phrase, you will then have 15 seconds to shout whatever you want at your computer screen and then continue reading.

Internet Explorer

OK, now that you've gotten that out of your system, let's get back on topic. The following is completely from a user experience perspective. I do absolutely zero web development. This is not a reflection on IE's standards compliance.

Internet Explorer is no longer the terrible piece of crap that it was when I started using Firefox in the FF 1.5 days. So what brought me back to Internet Explorer, you might ask? Was it Firefox's rapid release schedule? Was it software compatibility with certain enterprise web apps? Was it pure insanity? No, it was none of that. It was Apple. I have all Apple hardware at home and Safari on OS X is excellent. I also have an iPad2, which means that for bookmark synchronization, iCloud is my only choice. It works great, except for the fact that IE is the only browser that Apple supports bookmark sync to on Windows. This leaves my work PC out of the loop.

I gave IE 9.0.4 a spin on my work PC with iCloud bookmark sync enabled and I have to admit, it's not a bad experience. I don't use a lot of add-ons with Firefox, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on a whole lot. In fact, angrybirds.chrome.com works just fine, so it passes my usability test. :) Some things that work in other browsers still is a bit broken on IE 9, like imgur's drag-and-drop uploading for example. Overall though, I'm happy with the trade-off that I had to make in order to sync my bookmarks across all of my devices. If you haven't used it in a while, maybe it's time to dust it off and give it a whirl.

I purposely do not name my employer here and any reference to it is stripped from scripts/code before it is posted. This blog and all related links and profiles are entirely my own. My opinions, beliefs, rants, etc are completely mine and are not indicative of the beliefs of my employer.